


pygmalion

by lazyfish



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Bobbi is Galatea, F/M, Fitz is Pygmalion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29521164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfish/pseuds/lazyfish
Summary: I remember how to be human,Bobbi says.I think you taught me that.(Or, Fitz falls in love with a statue. Kind of.)
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Bobbi Morse
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: o for a muse of fire





	pygmalion

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you to Libby (@LibbyWeasley) who informed me that I used two semi-colons in one sentence, like an _academic_ (as well as generally helping make this fic better and being the coolest human ever).

Women are peculiar creatures.

Fitz has known this all his life, of course, but the knife twists deeper as he grows older. The boys he grew up with - men now, like him - have all gotten married, and some have sired children.

Fitz is still trying to find a woman who will look past his shaking hands and faltering voice. As a younger man he had never been particularly attractive to the women of the town, but they had at least been willing to entertain him as a possibility. Until, of course, the accident.

His hands don’t shake so badly he cannot sculpt, though; it is the gods’ smallest mercy that they left him that, a beacon in the darkness. Every day when Fitz says his prayers, he thanks whatever god will listen that he still has art.

(Every day, he prays to Aphrodite for a love who will see the way his hands shake and kiss them anyways. He prays to Aphrodite for a woman who will not care when his words fail him, for someone who will love his heart as much as his head as much as his body.)

He does not mean to sculpt a woman, at first. He never knows what he’s going to end up with when he starts - it’s one of the most exciting parts of being an artist - but by the time he’s blocked out the body with rough slabs of clay, there is no doubt of what he’s making. Fitz doesn’t try to still his hands or create something else; what is meant to be created will come forth with or without him.

The clay is soft and sure under his hands, and Fitz allows himself the simple pleasure of sculpting without his own insidious fears getting in the way. He does not tell himself the woman he is sculpting looks misshapen or that he is not good enough to be crafting such an exquisite form. He simply keeps moving, smoothing clay and whittling it away until he is half in love with the face that stares back at him.

He thinks the statue is beautiful. Fitz thinks everything he sculpts is beautiful but she - that is, the statue - is different. Fitz wonders if she came from his imagination, or someplace else.

It’s silly, of course. But Fitz almost can’t believe his hands shaped her jawline or the curves of her lips or her kind, patient eyes. That is nothing to speak of the rest of her body, though Fitz blushes when his mind wanders to that.

Even if women are strange, even if they do not desire him - he desires _them_ , and it is embarrassing his desire extends so far as to blush at the thought of a statue.

Fitz throws a damp sheet over the woman before he leaves his workshop for the weekend; there is a festival and he won’t have time to return to his work and he doesn’t want the clay to dry out.

\---

Fitz clutches a sweet cake wrapped in crisp white linen and walks through the town streets with slow, timid steps. Aphrodite’s altar is already clustered with offerings, it being her festival that is spinning around him, and his seems so small in comparison - especially with the magnitude of what he’s asking for.

He kneels in front of the goddess’s altar, tongue heavy in his mouth.

 _Please_ , he whispers, setting the cake down. _I just want someone like her to love me._

The goddess can hear what he doesn’t say, who he means when he says _her_ , he hopes. 

The world feels too small and too loud, so Fitz flees to his workshop, only able to breathe again when there’s a door between him and the festivities. 

After ten deep, calming breaths, he returns to the place he feels most at peace - in front of his statue.

The problem is, the statue is gone.

Fitz’s heart pounds in his throat, his blood rushes to his face, and his stomach plunges to his toes. How can a statue that large simply _vanish_? No one else has been in his workshop; he doesn’t have anyone he trusts enough to show him this part of his life.

 _Hello?_ The voice, distinctly feminine, ripples through the empty space, and Fitz pivots to face it.

 _Barbaros_ , he half-says, half asks. 

_Stranger._

_Is that my name?_ The woman steps closer, and a ray of sunlight slanting in through an open window catches on her face.

No, it can’t be -

His statue, living?

 _No_. Fitz licks his lips, finding his mouth suddenly dry. _Unless you want it to be?_

 _I don’t know what I want._ The sheet Fitz had put on top of his statue is instead wrapped around this woman, keeping her modest.

 _Do you know who you are?_ he asks.

 _No._ The woman hesitates, but takes another step forward, her bare feet stirring up a cloud of dry clay dust he hadn’t bothered to clean the day before. _But I know who you are._

Fitz’s words fumble and his hands shake.

 _You made me, didn’t you?_ Bobbi speaks, saving Fitz from tripping on his tongue.

He nods. He hadn’t thought when he prayed to the goddess that she would bring his statue to life - just bring him someone like her. Someone with kind eyes, who he didn’t mind spending hours with. Someone he could love.

He should’ve been more specific.

 _I think my name should be Barbara,_ she says. _Bobbi._

 _Bobbi_ , he repeats. It’s better than any name he could’ve chosen, that’s for sure. It fits.

 _And you’re Fitz_.

 _I’m Fitz,_ he agrees.

Bobbi shuffles another step closer, and Fitz reaches a hand out on instinct. When she takes it, she is not the smooth clay he’s accustomed to. She’s warm, and her hands are soft under his.

 _I remember how to be human,_ Bobbi says. _I think you taught me that._

She is Bobbi, he is Fitz - and apparently, he taught her how to be human.

\---

Aphrodite’s festival dies and summer wanes into autumn, but Bobbi doesn’t become any less alive. If anything, the opposite is true. She had said the first day she remembers how to be human, but with every new thing Fitz shows her she seems to re-remember some part of her she’d forgotten. She smiles and she laughs and she sings and she dances - but she also cries and rages and shouts sometimes.

She is _human_ , the good and the bad, and every day Fitz stumbles more into love with her. Every day he stumbles more into love with the world, too. The soft grass that makes Bobbi sneeze, the blue sky and the clouds drifting across it that Bobbi makes shapes out of, the roaring water that Bobbi dangles her toes in… they’re all old, but they’re new, too.

It is one thing to love a statue with a beautiful face; it is another thing entirely to love a woman with a beautiful heart.

Bobbi is not the peculiar sort of woman. Fitz understands her, and not just because he created her. He understands her because she’s patient with him, explaining what he doesn’t know intuitively. She is not shy about holding his shaking hands, and she waits patiently for his words when his brain jumbles them up. 

It is one thing to love a statue with kind eyes; it is another thing entirely to love a woman with kind eyes.

Autumn flickers by, and so does winter. Spring brings with it new beginnings, and the first time Bobbi kisses him Fitz’s soul soars.

 _I remember how to be human_ , Fitz whispers to Bobbi when their lips part. He had been afraid of living after the accident, and hadn’t even noticed until she came whirling in, showing him everything with new eyes. _I think you taught me that_.

 _Good_.

 _Good_ , Fitz repeats.

That’s what their love is, he thinks as he holds her hands in his. It is good.


End file.
